Definition:

the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one

Examples:

"She lost her ticket and her temper."

[My cousin] roars around on a shocking old motor bike - mustache and dignity flying in the morning breeze..." - Sinclair Lewis, Dodsworth

About the Word:

Zeugma comes from a Greek word meaning "to join." In ancient times, the city of Zeugma, which spanned the two sides of the Euphrates river in what is now part of southern Turkey, was a key trading link between the western Mediterranean and eastern Mesopotamia.

The Greek word zeugma was also applied to semantic structures that, like a physical bridge, connect two disparate words.

Definition:

Example:

About the Word:

The operatic character Sixtus Beckmesser made his stage (and linguistic) debut in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner's Beckmesser was a nervous and narrow-minded clerk whose devotion to the rules made him both a pedant and a musical philistine.

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Definition:

distress, depression, or confusion resembling that caused by a hangover; or, a discordant clamor

Example:

"Tired and hungry, he found the frenzy of the carnival less thrill than katzenjammer."

About the Word:

The German Katzen means "cats" and Jammer means "distress"; the early German sense of katzenjammer referred to a hangover.

The "discordant clamor" sense of Katzenjammer became popular thanks to the cartoon strip The Katzenjammer Kids, which first appeared in 1897 and featured two mischievous boys and the victims of their antics.